So the Southern Baptist convention has decided it wants to build a better trap to catch a certain mouse? According to the manifest of the Baptists' 1997 convention, the group plans to shun Mickey and his Mouseketeer cohorts right out of business and into the big corporate graveyard in the sky.

Why? Well it seems the big cheeses at Disney Corporation think all employees should be treated fairly regardless of sexual orientation, including their homosexual employees -- and the southern Baptists apparently believe this attitude is the crux of all the world's evil.

Now the Disney Corporate honchos aren't planning to host an annual Gay Ball or anything remotely like that. Nor are they incorporating the Gay Pride parade into any of their theme park extravaganzas. What they have done is simply offer the same benefits packages to their homosexual employees as they offer to other employees.

This package includes such items as family health care and retirement plans and extends to include whomever the employee considers immediate family.

Well I hate to burst the Baptists' bubble, but the Disney Corporation does not employ all the known or unknown homosexuals in the world. A lot of other companies do too, and guess what -- they also provide their employees with health and pension benefits. Nary a word is ever mentioned that these benefits are for the protection and well-being of only heterosexual employees.

Well, if the Baptists are going to start taking names and kicking the backsides of companies which have hired gay employees -- they better get a real long roll of paper because I don't think there are too many businesses that don't have at least one homosexual, known or not, on their payroll.

The only difference between Disney Corporation and other companies in this regard is the suits over at Mickey Mouse Central actually have gone one step farther and offered these benefits to unmarried partners of their employees, some of whom are homosexual.

You have to wonder if any of the Baptist leadership were listening for answers while making their prayers for guidance before and during their convention.

The Baptist leadership could concentrate on such real world ills as poverty, neglect, war, disease and pestilence, and do some real good for a change. Instead recent battles the Baptist leadership have decided are worthwhile causes to take up cudgels and crosses against are the over-dressed mouse's gay employees and those temptresses of the first power, working mothers in Berryville.

There are more than 17 million members in the Southern Baptist Convention, which makes it the largest Protestant denomination in this country. Seventeen million! Think what 17 million people, working and praying together, could really do to solve the world's crisis.

They would truly be a force to reckon against evil. They just have to quit mickey mousing around and stop fighting paper tiger issues such as whether or not gay employees should receive health benefits.

Even if each one just pitched $1 a week, $52 a year into a "fight the world hunger" bucket they would raise $884 million annually. Each year! Think what that money could do to feed, clothe, educate and house those who are truly in need. It seems a shame waste all that do-gooding energy bashing a particular group of people just because the Baptist convention finds their sexual orientation offensive.

Now to be perfectly fair, the Baptists have based their motives for the boycott on what they believe are instructions in the Bible against the homosexual lifestyle. And, bless their hearts, if the Bible says it's so, as far as the membership of the Southern Baptist Convention believes -- it's so.

Hmmm, the Bible also makes mention of another particular sexual instruction -- one the Catholic Church takes very seriously, that of wasting one's seed on any type of sexual intercourse except for procreation.

Well, I guess the condom, birth control and other conception prevention industries are next on the Baptist hit list. Hey, if the Bible says that kind of stuff is a no-no, even between consenting adults and married couples, the Southern Baptist Convention has no choice but to shun those products too.

Okay, I realize that I've been very silly about a serious subject, but please, so has the Southern Baptist Convention.

According to more and more scientific reports, for the most part one doesn't choose to be gay any more than one gets to choose to be short or tall, or from which racial stock one will come. It seems a little short-sighted for the Baptists to be "coming out" against what may well be a God-ordained sexual orientation.

But hey, let's remember something else about the Bible. Although it is the word of God, is only the inspired word of God, produced by very fallible men. The Bible's chapters and verses have gone from verbal hand-me-downs to gospels written in Greek and Aramaic, then translated into Latin and Elizabethan English before becoming the version we use in our homes and churches. Whole gospels, chapters and verses have been discarded across the Bible's two millennia-long journey as each translator has edited the word of God into yet another version.

If you don't think this is so, compare the Catholic's version of the Bible with the Protestant's King James version. Not only are there minor differences in the wording of key verses, but whole chapters which appear in the Catholic version are missing from the Protestant's.

It seems that if the Southern Baptist Convention wants to blacklist a whole group of people based on what the Bible says about their lifestyle, they had better first be absolutely certain that what they are basing their decisions on has not been tainted by the mistake-prone hand of man.

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